By Lou Mastria
AppChoices is being updated to remain consistent with industry best practices and consumer expectations/preferences.
As the digital advertising industry continues to evolve, the Digital Advertising Alliance (DAA) is working to ensure that its time-tested Transparency and Control Principles, as well as its supporting choice tools, continue to meet the needs of industry and consumers as digital advertising forges ahead.
Recently, we initiated broad communications with those companies which participate on our AppChoices tool, as we look to revise AppChoices to meet the realities of emerging technology changes in digital advertising.
While the changes below are specific to AppChoices, the changes we are undertaking in the app provide a directional sense of where we are headed to support new, growing and emerging ways to reach audiences with relevance. So, if your company is listed on or linking to AppChoices, WebChoices, or both, this blog post is worth a few minutes of your time.
To meet the need for consumers to receive transparency and control over data used to tailor ads, DAA is working to offer several new enhancements to its choice tools such that brand advertisers and their supply chain partners can achieve transparency and control in this new era.
Image 1. How DAA Principles for Transparency & Control are Enabled for Users Today
We will continue to leverage the existing, widely deployed “AdChoices” icon [
] as a gateway for information about transparency and control at the Web site, mobile app and in-ad level. We plan to supplement that transparency with an additional layer of visibility and control in a new feature in AppChoices. A new “Token-based opt-out/revocation” feature and user flow. DAA is providing an updated opt-out tool to participating companies as an additional way to effectuate consumer opt-outs, or revocations of prior consent, to certain digital advertising activity.
For companies that use “tokens” (sometimes referred to as “hashed” email address) as an identifier for their digital advertising services, the updated opt-out/consent revocation tool will be one way that a consumer can request to opt-out or withdraw consent to Online Behavioral Advertising (OBA), also known as Interest-Based Advertising (IBA). The opt-out/consent revocation would apply to participating companies that engage in such advertising using an email-based token consistent with the DAA Self-Regulatory Principles and Guidance. (Additional information can be seen here.)
This new option will be included in a forthcoming AppChoices release, and is already under development. This will complement the current identifier-based choices (opt-out/withdrawal) AppChoices already provides via operating system mobile advertising identifiers.
The new service contemplates that companies (both those already integrated into AppChoices and new ones) would be able to choose to participate in the service to help make a commitment to user privacy apparent -- to their advertising partners, and to consumers -- by choosing to be listed in this new user flow. By submitting their email address through the DAA tool, consumers will be able to opt-out or revoke consent for the use of their email address as a token for IBA by participating companies for DAA-covered advertising purposes.
Image 2: How a Token-Based Opt-Out/Revocation Choice May Be Presented to AppChoices Users Shortly
This is the first in a series of new features we plan to make available in order to keep new identifiers and emerging channels in line with the transparency and control consumers expect.
For companies whose business models rely on providing token-based identifiers, please let us know and we will send along integration instructions for participating in this important centralized tool that is pointed to from the trillions of AdChoices Icons served across the ecosystem. For companies who rely on using token-based identifiers for their branding and advertising in the first party context, this new tool allows you to continue to offer meaningful transparency and choice to your consumers even as the industry evolves. This kind of one-stop industry-level privacy control has been lauded and applauded. And, we hope, with your participation, to continue to provide effective consumer transparency and control as we move into the next generation of digital advertising with our new generation of choice tools.
